All this was clearly brought out in a dramatic statement that Mr. Cannon made on the floor of the House on May 10, 1960, just after the failure of the U-2 flight of Francis Gary Powers: “The plane was on an espionage mission authorized and supported by money provided under an appropriation recommended by the House Committee on Appropriations and passed by the Congress.”
He then referred to the fact that the appropriation and the activity had also been approved and recommended by the Bureau of the Budget and, like all such expenditures and operations, was under the aegis of the Chief Executive. He discussed the authority of the subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee to recommend an appropriation for such purposes and also the fact that these activities had not been divulged to the House and to the country. He recalled the circumstances during World War II when billions of dollars were appropriated, through the Manhattan Project, for the atomic bomb under the same general safeguards as in the case of the U-2, i.e., on the authority of a subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee. He referred to the widespread espionage by the Soviet Union, to the activities of their spies in stealing the secret of the atomic bomb. Alluding to the surprise attack by the Communists in Korea in 1950, he justified the U-2 operation in these words:
Each year we have admonished . . . the CIA that it must meet situations of this character with effective measures. We told them, “This must not happen again and it is up to you to see that it does not happen again” . . . and the plan that they were following when the plane was taken is their answer to that demand.
Mr. Cannon took occasion to commend the CIA for its action in sending reconnaissance planes over the Soviet Union for the four years preceding Powers’ capture and concluded:
We have here demonstrated conclusively that free men, confronted by the most ruthless and criminal despotism, can under the Constitution of the United States protect this nation and preserve world civilization.
I cite this merely to show the extent to which even the most secret of the CIA’s intelligence operations have, under appropriate safeguards, been laid before the representatives of the people in Congress.
In addition to the scrutiny of CIA activities by the Appropriations Committee, there is also a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by Congressman Carl Vinson, who for years has been head of the Armed Services Committee itself. To this subcommittee, the Agency reports its current operations to the extent and in the detail the committee desires, dealing here not so much with the financial aspects of operations but with all the other elements of CIA’s work. In the Senate, there is a comparable subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee.
Fifteen years ago, when the legislation to set up a Central Intelligence Agency was being considered, the Congressional committees working on the matter sought my views. In addition to testifying, I submitted a memorandum, published in the record of the proceedings, in which I proposed that a special advisory body for the new Agency should be constituted to include representatives of the President, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense. This group should, I proposed, “assume the responsibility for advising and counseling the Director of Intelligence and assure the proper liaison between the Agency and these two Departments and the Executive.” This procedure has been followed. All operations of an intelligence character which involve policy considerations are subject to such approval.
Of course, the public and the press remain free to criticize the actions taken by intelligence, including those which are exposed by mishap or indiscretion. This holds just as true for intelligence activities as for any government operations. When an intelligence operation goes wrong and publicity results, the Intelligence Agency and its Director, in particular, must stand ready to assume responsibility if silence is impossible. There have been times, as in the case of the U-2 descent on Soviet territory, and the Cuban affair of April, 1961, where the executive has publicly assumed responsibility, and for good reasons, as I have already explained.
It is an established rule that the Agency should never intervene in policy matters except when and where specifically directed by high authority.
Also, its personnel should keep out of politics. No one in the Agency, from the Director on down, may engage in any political activities of any nature, except to vote. A resignation is immediately accepted—or demanded—where this occurs, and the political aspirant is given to understand that quick reemployment, in case of any unsuccessful plunge into the political arena, is unlikely.
In the last analysis, however, the most important safeguards lie in the character and self-discipline of the leadership of the intelligence service and of the people who work for it—on the kind of men and women we have on the job, their integrity and their respect for the democratic processes and their sense of duty and devotion in carrying out their important and delicate tasks.
After more than a decade of service, I can testify that I have never known a group of men and women more devoted in the defense of our country and its way of life than those who are working in the Central Intelligence Agency. Our people do not go into intelligence for financial reward or because the service can give them, in return for their work, high rank or public acclaim. They do it because of the opportunity to serve their country, the fascination of the work and the belief that through this service they personally can make a contribution to our nation’s security.
It is not our intelligence organization which threatens our liberties. The threat is rather that we will not be adequately informed of the perils which face us and that we will fail to act in time. If we have more Cubas, if non-Communist countries which are today in jeopardy are further weakened, then we could well be isolated and our own liberties, too, could be in danger.
The military challenge of the nuclear missile age is well understood, and we are rightly spending billions to counter it. We must also deal with all aspects of the invisible war, the Kremlin’s war of liberation, the subversive threats orchestrated by the Soviet Communist party with all its ramifications and fronts, supported by espionage. The last thing we can afford to do today is to put our intelligence in chains. Its protective and informative role is indispensable in an era of unique and continuing danger.
Bibliography
The following is a selected list of a few texts on various aspects of intelligence, available in English, which I have found useful in the preparation of this book on “The Craft of Intelligence.”
1. HISTORICAL
Richard Wilmer Rowan. The Story of Secret Service. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. 1937.) A comprehensive history of espionage and its practitioners from Bible days to the end of World War I.
Samuel B. Griffith. Sun Tzu, The Art of War. (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1963.) A modern translation of, and commentary on, this ancient and important Chinese work.
John Bakeless. Turncoats, Traitors and Heroes. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. 1959.) An account of espionage in the American Revolution.
Barbara W. Tuchman. The Zimmermann Telegram. (New York: Viking. 1958.) A recounting of the most significant achievement in cryptanalysis during World War I.
Ewen Edward Samuel Montagu. The Man Who Never Was. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. 1954.) A reconstruction, by the man who was in charge of the operation, of the classic British hoax in World War II which misled the Nazis about the coming Allied invasion of Sicily.
Stewart Alsop and Thomas Braden. Sub Rosa; the O.S.S. and American Espionage. (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock. 1946.) Examples of OSS clandestine intelligence and paramilitary operations in Europe, Africa and Asia.
2. THE U. S. GOVERNMENT AND INTELLIGENCE
Sherman Kent. Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1949.) The theory and operation of national intelligence production.
Harry Howe Ransom. Central Intelligence and National Security. (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press. 1958.) Development, organization and problems of the U.S. intelligence system.
Douglass Cater. The Fourth Branch of Government. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1959.) The government, the press and security.
3. SOVIET INTELLIGENCE
Simon Wolin and Robert M. Slusser. The Soviet Secret Police. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger. 1957.) History of the Soviet State Security services from the Cheka in 1917 until 1956.
David J. Dallin. Soviet Espionage. (New Haven: Yale University Press. 1955.) A thorough account of Soviet foreign intelligence from the 1920s until 1954.
Alexander Foote. Handbook for Spies. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. 1949.) The case history of the operation of a Soviet wartime intelligence net.
Alan Moorehead. The Traitors. (New York: Harper & Row. 1963.) Atomic espionage of the World War II period, with particular emphasis on Klaus Fuchs.
John Bullock and Henry Miller. Spy Ring: A Story of the Naval Secrets Case. (London: Secker and Warburg. 1961.) A blow-by-blow description of the activities and eventual apprehension of the Soviet net in England headed by Gordon Lonsdale.
4. BOOKS GIVING THE EXPERIENCES OF FORMER OFFICERSOF SOVIET BLOC INTELLIGENCE SERVICES
Peter Deriabin and Frank Gibney, The Secret World. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. 1959.) A presentation of the organization and functions of Soviet State Security from 1946 to 1953.
Igor Gouzenko. The Iron Curtain. (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 1948.) The Soviet code clerk’s own exposé of Soviet intelligence activities in Canada during World War II.
Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov. Empire of Fear. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger. 1957.) The Petrovs’ own story of their intelligence activities in Australia on behalf of the U.S.S.R.
Pawel Monat. Spy in the U.S. (New York: Harper & Row. 1961.) Reminiscences and reflections of the former Polish Military Attaché in Washington on his own intelligence-gathering activities in the U.S.A.
Alexander Orlov. Handbook of Intelligence and Guerrilla Warfare. (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press. 1963.) Orlov was one of Stalin’s NKVD chiefs in Spain during the Civil War, at which time he defected. This is a book on the techniques of clandestine intelligence and clandestine warfare as practiced by the Soviets in the ’20s and ’30s.
Aleksandr Kaznacheev. Inside a Soviet Embassy. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. 1962.) Experiences of a Russian diplomat in Burma who was at the same time a secret member of the Soviet intelligence service.
5. THE COLD WAR
Josef Korbel. The Communist Subversion of Czechoslovakia, 1938–1948. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1959.) A report on the Communists’ take-over of Czechoslovakia.
Dan Kurzman. Subversion of the Innocents. (New York: Random House. 1963.) A country-by-country account of Soviet attempts to infiltrate and take over weaker nations, uncommitted or otherwise, in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
President Kennedy and Mr. Dulles at the inauguration of the new CIA Headquarters in November, 1961.
An aerial photo of the Headquarters in Virginia. WIDE WORLD
Benjamin Franklin dictating to Edward Bancroft, his secretary-assistant who was an espionage agent for Britain during the Revolution. CULVER PICTURES, INC.
Major Allan Pinkerton (left), who organized an espionage system for the U.S. early in the Civil War, with President Abraham Lincoln and Maj. Gen. J. A. McClernand. CULVER PICTURES, INC.
Henry L. Stimson, when Secretary of State in 1929, closed down the so-called Black Chamber. CULVER PICTURES, INC.
Charles Evans Hughes, then Secretary of State, with delegates to the 1921 Disarmament Conference. At this time American cryptographers had broken the Japanese diplomatic code. CULVER PICTURES, INC.
Richard Sorge, German newspaperman in Tokyo who ran a spy ring for Soviet Russia in Japan in the early days of World War II. WIDE WORLD
Klaus Fuchs, who gave atomic secrets to Soviet Russia, arriving in East Germany after release from a British prison. WIDE WORLD
The Soviet agent, Frank Jackson, who murdered Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940. WIDE WORLD
David Greenglass, member of the Rosenberg atomic spy ring, after his arraignment in 1950. WIDE WORLD
Rudolf Abel, Soviet spy who masqueraded as a photographer in Brooklyn. WIDE WORLD
U-2 Pilot Francis Gary Powers before the Senate Armed Services Committee. WIDE WORLD
This picture of the San Diego, California, naval air station, taken at 70,000 feet, illustrates the scope of U-2 aerial surveillance at great heights. WIDE WORLD
Henry Cabot Lodge, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, demonstrating to the Security Council in May, 1960, how a microphone had been concealed in a wooden carving of the Great Seal of the U.S. in the American Embassy in Moscow. WIDE WORLD
John Vassall, former British Admiralty clerk, convicted in 1962 of spying for Russia. WIDE WORLD
Oleg Penkovsky in military court in Moscow where he was sentenced to death for espionage in May, 1963. WIDE WORLD
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